"...And Their Ears Are Dull Of Hearing..."

We often take for granted our wonderful God-given sense of hearing. Although many animals have been blessed with a much greater capacity to hear distant sounds and with a greater frequency range of sound than the human species has, we can nevertheless know that God has given us what we need to do the job of auditory intake.

Have you ever stopped to consider the limited frequency range of human hearing? Humans can hear only in the frequency range of about 40 cycles per second up to about 20,000 cycles per second. Dogs, for instance, can hear up to about 40,000 cycles per second - thus the use of the “dog whistle”. And scientists believe that part of the process of migration of birds and animals is based on their ability to receive very low frequency sounds, possibly down to 4 cycles per second.

I have occasionally though it would be great to have a larger range of hearing, but then would it really? The constant bombard­ment of great ranges of sound would probably drive us crazy. We do appreciate quiet times.

In Matthew Chapter 13, Jesus is answering the question of why He speaks to the people in parables. He basically says that the general population is not ready to hear the message of the kingdom of God like the disciples are. He says that the people “in hearing, they don’t hear and they don’t understand” (v13) and the people’s “hearts are heavy and their ears are dull of hearing” (v15).

How many times in life do we have something said to us that enters our ears but, for whatever reason, doesn’t register on our brains? We may deliberately ignore it because it doesn’t seem to apply to us. We may not actually believe it and so discount the message. We may be thinking of something else at the time and miss what is being said.

But let’s all stop now and thank God that we have ears to hear - and, for that matter, eyes to see, tongues to taste, noses to smell and fingers to feel with. Our sensory intake is a wonderful necessity.

My own ears were physically “dull to hearing” once. My wife and I had learned to SCUBA dive and were anxious to do some serious diving in the Caribbean. We booked a vacation with Windjammer Cruises for a sailing vacation in the British Virgin Islands. A highlight of our trip was to be a dive on the “wreck of the Rhone.” The Rhone was a sailing vessel with passengers and cargo which sunk in 1882 during a hurricane off the coast of Virgin Gorda, an island in the British Virgins. The remains of the vessel were very well preserved in 90 feet of water.

The movie “The Deep” with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset had just come out a couple of years before. And many of the underwater scenes in the movie had been filmed on the wreck of the Rhone. It was an exciting film and we were anxious to see where it had been made.

There were about eight of us in the diving party on a beautiful tropical day. They anchored the dive boat right over the wreck and we were all to proceed down the anchor line to the wreck. When I had gotten up that morning, I had some nasal and sinus congestion but it seemed to pass and I ignored it. But when I started down the anchor line and began to clear the pressure in my ears as you must do when you start descending, I couldn‘t clear my ears! I went down and up and down and up between 15 and 20 feet trying to “pop” the pressure but it didn’t work. All the others were descending okay along the rope and I desperately wanted to go too. So I did a foolish thing as a comparative novice diver. I forced myself to go anyway hoping that my ears would somehow be alright. The pressure pain built as I reached 30, then 40 feet and suddenly the pain stopped - everything seemed okay. I continued on with the group and had a great experience down on the Rhone. We explored for about a half hour and then time was up.

As we ascended (making stops along the way for decompression), everything seemed normal to me. But when I reached the dive boat and was pulled in, I had blood dripping out of both ears and I couldn‘t hear! Only a very distant background sound came to me.

Blood had filled up my middle ears and the pressure had ruptured both of my ear drums. I had really messed myself up. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly, but my ears continued to be “dull of hearing” - people had to shout at me for me to try to understand.

The divemaster said that I was very lucky I didn’t drown. Usually when this happens, you lose your sense of equilibrium and your ability to navigate underwater because the vestibular mechanism which controls equilibrium is in the middle ear.

The trip home in the airplane was troublesome because the difference in cabin pressures gave me a headache.

Back at home, the ear doctor told me that my middle ears were completely filled up with solidified blood clots and that they would probably be absorbed gradually by my body but it would take a long time - how long he didn’t know. There was no way to remove them safely without destroying things. So I had to wait and see what happens.

I had done a foolish thing and now I was going to pay for it. I fortunately never had any equilibrium problems but the loss of hearing continued for six months. Suddenly one day while I was mowing my grass in the yard (with only a distant mower sound), my hearing popped back to almost normal in one ear. It was a dramatic and a thankful to God moment for me. A few days later the other ear popped back to normal and everything was right again. A hearing check on the doctor’s machine showed normal hearing again.

I tell you this story to give you a greater appreciation of your physical senses and a greater compassion and understanding for those who are deaf (or blind or incapacitated in any physical way).

No matter our day to day troubles, we have much to be thankful for. God has made us children in His Family. He has given us the power (when we choose to use it) to live this human life in the best way. And He has given us the assurance that we will spend eternity with Him, at home with Him in new spirit bodies. With the blessings we have with our human sense organs, we can hardly imagine the spiritual “senses” we will have with our new total spirit bodies!

“In everything give thanks,
for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18

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